sleeping dragon

The room was well-lit, almost painfully so. Three men, two in suits and one in a white lab coat, looked down on a fourth lying unconscious in a clear rectangular box, like a glass coffin.
"Will he live?" asked one of the suits, the older of the two. His raspy voice sounded doubtful. It also promised trouble if the answer was negative. Cmdr. Bartholomew "Bart" Hitchcock of the ISSP hadn't come all this way to be foiled at the last minute by an incompetent doctor.
He got the answer he wanted. The doctor grunted gloomily but said, "I can put him back together for you, yes. You didn't get him into the cryoshell in any big hurry, though, did you?" He tapped the read-out irritably. "Another few minutes would have been too late."
The younger suit stiffened. "We were lucky to get him out at all, given the circumstances. It was like a war zone. Hell, it was a war zone. The whole damned building was coming down, the main elevator was blown, and every survivor was armed to the teeth and nervous as cats in a dog kennel."
"Colorful," the doctor said drily.
Hitchcock said, "Roberts doesn't exaggerate, Chan. If anything, he understates the difficulty of the operation. Don't forget, we had to get him past our own people, some of whom were actually paying attention. We were lucky to make it."
Dr. Chan was unimpressed. "Is he worth it?"
"Do you want the Red Dragons to die out?" It was a rhetorical question. All three men were on none-too-generous ISSP salaries, all three enjoyed lifestyles much more luxurious than their salaries warranted, thanks to the Red Dragon syndicate, and all three wanted it to go on just that way. "The organization lost the old men, then Vicious. This guy is their last hope, the only one who can really lead them, and the only thing holding the syndicate together right now is that they know he's still alive."
"What about Baum? He'll tear the solar system apart looking for him." Harvey Baum was the ISSP commander on Mars, and had a violent hatred of all the syndicates. He'd already been poised to strike in the chaos he'd hoped would follow Vicious' takeover. When Vicious had proven to be a better leader than he'd expected, he sat back and waited, like a hungry tiger, and got a stroke of unbelievable luck when this man had gone in after Vicious and killed him. Baum was now happily sweeping up the scraps of the syndicate, or so he believed.
But Lt. Roberts didn't seem concerned. In fact, he grinned. "Why would he be looking for this guy? Spiegel's dead."
"Baum wouldn't believe that without a body."
"Oh, there was a body." That was Hitchcock's raspy voice again. Too many cigars, Chan thought absently. "We've got it all on vid, right down to zipping him into the body bag, and we'll even have a legit death certificate -- with your name on it, Doc. Hell, they're getting the tombstone ready now, and guess who's in charge of seeing to the burial? Lt. Roberts here. Once you work your surgical magic and bring him back to life, Spiegel's going to owe the three of us big time, and therefore the Dragons are going to owe us. Not a bad position to be in."
Roberts shifted uncomfortably. Hitchcock glanced at him, giving him tacit permission to speak, and he said, "What concerns me, sir, is that the word on the street says Spiegel's fight with Vicious was personal, that it didn't have anything to do with the Dragons. He might not want to take over."
"That's bull. Nobody in his right mind would tackle Vicious in his own stronghold for a personal vendetta. No, he wanted to take over, all right. And we're going to see to it that he does. Nice and smooth. And then we can live like kings."
"There's one problem," Chan said. Both ISSP officers looked at him as if he'd uttered a blasphemy. He scowled. "I'm a surgeon, a skilled surgeon. I'll save Spiegel. I'll even put him back together more or less as he was. But pre- and post-surgery, he is going to need constant care for some time, and I don't care how valuable he is, I'm not wasting my time being a nurse. I need an assistant."
"You want us to get you a nurse?"
"No. Another doctor. I want someone who would be able to react appropriately should an emergency arise. This isn't a nursing home case!" he scowled. "What other ISSP doctors are on the Dragon payroll?"
"On Mars? You're it, Chan."
"Bring someone else in, then. From Ganymede, maybe."
"We can't do that. We can't be sure who can be trusted."
"To hell with trusting him. You can terminate him once our job here is done. That is your area of expertise, isn't it?"
Roberts said, "I can arrange accidents, but we don't want eyes looking this way for any reason. What about some kind of virus or medical accident? Could you do that, Dr. Chan?"
"What, and betray my Hippocratic Oath? No. I leave that stuff to you. Or bring in a Red Dragon assassin, if you don't have the taste for it."
Hitchcock held up a hand to stop Roberts from saying anything more. "Very well, Chan. I'll find a way. Who would you like us to get?"
Chan thought hard, staring down at his patient without really seeing him. "I know. Get Hammond -- Dr. Gwenyth Hammond. She's probably in the City East Clinic, patching up your wounded patrolmen. She's a fool, but she's a good clinician and she does what she's told without asking questions. And right now she's probably the only person in the whole of the ISSP who won't guess who this guy is."
Hitchcock shrugged. "We'll get her."

Gwen Hammond was at the clinic, but she was dealing with a case of grass fever that a patrolman's son had contracted on Europa. The take-down of the syndicate had been relatively bloodless, and she had some spare time to help out the family practice doctors in the front. She couldn't have been happier. Working for the ISSP, as her parents had before her, she was more accustomed to bullet and knife wounds, laser burns, and space sickness than anything else. A little boy with grass fever was a pleasant change.
She gave the father a prescription and specific instructions, then sent him on his way. A nurse was handling the next patient, so she wandered off to the break room for a cup of coffee. As she passed her supervisor's office, she heard him make an odd sound. Like a whoop. She stuck her head in. "Bertie? Are you all right?"
Dr. Mkambo was grinning. "I'm more than all right. Come take a look at this report from HQ, about the attack on the Red Dragons."
She came to his side and stared at the screen, which was covered with fine print. "Jeez. Translate it for me, would you?"
Mkambo said, "Oh, honey. It says I'm in love. Too bad the guy's dead."
"Will you please make sense?"
"OK. According to this, all that damage at the Dragons' building -- all those guys killed, all those explosions -- they were the work of one man. Just one."
"Come on, Bertie. Get real. That's got to be a joke."
"This is the official report. Take a look, that's Baum's code. They've even got a jacket on this guy. His name was Spiegel, Spike Spiegel."
"Funny name."
"You want to hear this?"
"No, but you want to tell me. Go ahead."
"Seems he used to be a Red Dragon, but got out about three years ago and became a cowboy. Partnered up with an ex-ISSP officer, which is interesting."
"A cowboy?"
"Bounty hunter, to you ignorant folks."
"So was he after a bounty?"
"Nope. Apparently his target was the new leader of the Red Dragons. He got him, too. Went through the building and all the guards like a hot knife through butter. What a mensch."
She sipped her coffee. It was awful, as usual when Bertie made it. "So if he's so great, why is he dead?"
"Apparently the Dragons leader killed him. A fight to the death between the two of them. God, I would have loved to see it."
"You're a gladiator at heart, Bertie."
"Only in my fantasies, hon. Too bad I've got no courage," Mkambo grinned. "Hey, crime scene pictures." He gaped. "Holy shit. That building's gonna take a lot of repair."
Gwen didn't see a blast-damaged building. She saw scattered bodies, and turned her head away.
"Here's a picture of Spiegel. Cute. Too skinny, but cute."
She patted his shoulder. "He's got a long nose. That's why you think he's so cute. You love guys with long noses."
A pop-up directive appeared on the screen, and Gwen discreetly moved away so Mkambo could read it. He opened it, and a moment later he swore. "New orders. Dammit, Hammond, you've been reassigned."
"Me? Where?"
"Research, is all it says. Special assistant to Dr. Emil Chan."
"Chan?" She hated Chan. The man was a bully who demanded perfection from everyone but himself. "There must be a mistake. I'm not research, I'm clinical."
"The order's got your name on it." Mkambo shrugged. "I wish it didn't. We need you here a hell of a lot more than they do. But you were requested specifically, and the order's signed by Baum. Pack your stuff. And don't gripe, it's a promotion."

By the end of the day, Gwen was sick of hearing about Bertie's new hero, the late great Spike Spiegel, and she was tired of hearing him gripe about how his workload would double because they wouldn't replace her at the clinic for at least a month, knowing headquarters.
As she stuffed her few office belongings into a box, she thought that her parents, if they were still alive, would be delighted by this. They'd always wanted her to work her way up, out of the clinics and into the upper ranks of the ISSP. They'd never understood that getting her M.D. was as far as she was willing to go to satisfy their ambitions for her. She had no ambitions for herself. She enjoyed clinical work, helping people, making them feel better. And she wanted out of the ISSP, which had all the faults of a big organization. Her parents had been dead 10 months. When it was a full year, she planned to resign. She owed them that much respect, but no more.
Now it looked as if the ISSP was going to make her last two months into a living hell. That figured.
She reported to HQ in the morning and got two unpleasant surprises. The first was that whatever project Dr. Chan was working on, it was top secret, and for the next couple of weeks she wouldn't even be able to leave the lab compound for any reason. She had already gone through the usual ISSP rigamarole of lie detector tests, signing her life away, promising her first-born son, blah-blah-blah, before they sprang that on her. Then, to add the proverbial insult to injury, when she finally got through the swearing-in part and reported to the lab, it turned out her duties weren't research at all. They were nursing. She'd be taking care of one patient, in cryosleep, right here in the lab, for 16 hours a day.
She looked down at the patient, suspended in the cryoshell. Odd, he looks familiar. I wonder why? But she was too upset to think on it. "You must be kidding," she said to Chan.
"I don't joke, Dr. Hammond."
No, actually, he didn't. That was a hallmark of Emil Chan. No sense of humor. "Why me?"
"I needed a good clinical doctor who was both responsible and discreet."
"So who is this guy? Why's he so important?"
"You don't need to know that."
What he meant was, You don't want to know that. No problem. Gwen had not spent her life taking risks. "OK. So what do I call him?"
"John Doe."
"Great." How very original, Emil.
He outlined her duties, and she hoped the compound had a good library. If not, she was going to get really, really bored. After he was sure she was perfectly clear (she deliberately acted dense, simply because he so obviously expected it), he let her view the patient and punch up his chart. That woke her up. "Holy shit. What happened to this guy?"
"A bar brawl."
"What about that?" she said, indicating a line on the chart with one finger. The corresponding line on the patient was much more grim than the words and numbers on the screen. "Somebody in that bar have a butcher knife?"
She watched him wrestle with giving her accurate information to work with, versus the compulsive secrecy. "A sword."
It had to be the truth. It was too outlandish for a Chan lie. He didn't have that much imagination. "Interesting patrons in that bar," she muttered, scrolling down the rest of the chart. Chan would operate to remove the bullet and do the vascular and organ repair work as soon as the cryodogs had done their job and the patient was stable enough to survive it, probably another two or three days. She would assist, and she had a feeling she would be the only person assisting. This had to be an ISSP undercover operator who'd run into trouble on his assignment. Big trouble. He must have some pretty important news locked away in his unconscious brain, for the ISSP to be spending this kind of money on him.
Which brought up an interesting question, something to occupy herself with while holding this vigil. Depending on what the patient might say when he came out of the coma, Chan might or might not have the lab under surveillance. She'd rather they didn't, since she preferred doing certain things without some goofball watching her do them. She asked Chan, and was told of course the room was under constant surveillance, but she wasn't so sure. When he left, she could find out. People tended to forget she was just as much Eddie Hammond's daughter as Dr. Agatha Hammond's. She'd learned a lot from her father. Some of it was even useful. Dad had been a bit paranoid.
After going through the procedures with her one last time, Chan left, promising to return later with some reading material for her. That he'd bring it himself, and not send some flunky, told her a lot. She made a silent bet with herself that this whole thing was so secret, they wanted no official record and were trusting no one with surveillance. Thirty minutes after Chan left, she'd done a sweep of the entire lab, according to the procedure her father had always followed. She won the bet; there was no surveillance, either sound or vid. These people were taking risks. Or they thought she was an idiot.
She sighed. Probably the latter. It wouldn't be the first time.
Naturally, Chan still hadn't shown up with the reading material. She went to the cryoshell and leaned on the edge, on her elbows, and stared down at her patient. What do you have locked up in that handsome head of yours, that makes you so important?
He was handsome, too, in a quirky sort of way. He had a fine-boned face with a long nose that had been broken at least once, not pretty, but the kind of face you didn't get tired of looking at. Large eyes, too, although she couldn't see the color, and lots of black hair. That he was young and fit went without saying -- otherwise he'd never have made it into the shell, not with those injuries -- but even his build was quirky, long-legged and very lean, yet wide and deep in the chest.
Very attractive, all told. He looked interesting, maybe even fun. But that was probably her over-active imagination. She had enough of that quality to make up for Chan's lack. If this guy really was an ISSP undercover agent, "interesting" and "nice" were not going to be part of his personality.

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copyright by DragonKat 7/30/01

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